Specters of the Seen

Some things haunt us in plain sight. Not as ghosts in the dark, but as the weight of what’s unspoken, the echoes of what’s unclaimed. The past lingers in the tilt of a jaw, the hesitation in a step, the way a voice catches mid-sentence. It moves through muscle memory, through patterns we mistake for instinct. It is the unseen in the seen, shaping the choices we think are ours.

But what happens when we truly look? When we strip back the familiar and see what’s been staring back at us all along? The grief tucked beneath composure. The rage swallowed in politeness. The longing camouflaged as indifference. The moment we name it, we disrupt it. The moment we face it, we decide if it stays or if we let it dissolve.

We are not just the sum of our inherited shadows. We are the ones who get to unmake them, to move differently, to rewire what was once reflex. To take what was once an unconscious repetition and turn it into deliberate presence.

The specters remain—until we see them, until we stop letting them steer us, until we move beyond their reach.